Part 10 (1/2)

There is always a smoking-car attached to the train, generally immediately after the locomotive or luggage van. Labourers in their working clothes and the shabbily clad in general are apt to select this car, which thus practically takes the place of third-cla.s.s carriages on European railways. On the long-distance trains running to the West there are emigrant cars which also represent our third-cla.s.s cars, while the same function is performed in the South by the cars reserved for coloured pa.s.sengers. In a few instances the trains are made up of first-cla.s.s and second-cla.s.s carriages actually so named. A ”first-cla.s.s ticket,” however, in ordinary language means one for the universal day-coach as above described.

The ticket system differs somewhat from that in vogue in Europe, and rather curious developments have been the result. For short journeys the ticket often resembles the small oblong of pasteboard with which we are all familiar. For longer journeys it consists of a narrow strip of coupons, sometimes nearly two feet in length. If this is ”unlimited” it is available at any time until used, and the holder may ”stop over” at any intermediate station. The ”limited” and cheaper ticket is available for a continuous pa.s.sage only, and does not allow of any stoppages _en route_. The coupons are collected in the cars by the conductors in charge of the various sections of the line. The skill shown by these officials, pa.s.sing through a long and crowded train after a stoppage, in recognising the newcomers and asking for their tickets, is often very remarkable. Sometimes the conductor gives a coloured counter-check to enable him to recognise the sheep whom he has already shorn. These checks are generally placed in the hat-band or stuck in the back of the seat. The conductor collects them just before he hands over the train to the charge of his successor. As many complaints are made by English travellers of the incivility of American conductors, I may say that the first conductor I met found me, when he was on his rounds to collect his counter-checks, lolling back on my seat, with my hat high above me in the rack. I made a motion as if to get up for it, when he said, ”Pray don't disturb yourself, sir; I'll reach up for it.” Not all the conductors I met afterwards were as polite as this, but he has as good a right to pose as the type of American conductor as the overbearing ruffians who stalk through the books of sundry British tourists. In judging him it should be remembered that he democratically feels himself on a level with his pa.s.sengers, that he would be insulted by the offer of a tip, that he is hara.s.sed all day long by hundreds of foolish questions from foolish travellers, that he has a great deal to do in a limited time, and that however ”short” he may be with a male pa.s.senger he is almost invariably courteous and considerate to the unprotected female. Though his address may sometimes sound rather familiar, he means no disrespect; and if he takes a fancy to you and offers you a cigar, you need not feel insulted, and will probably find he smokes a better brand than your own.

A feature connected with the American railway system that should not be overlooked is the ma.s.s of literature prepared by the railway companies and distributed gratis to their pa.s.sengers. The ill.u.s.trated pamphlets issued by the larger companies are marvels of paper and typography, with really charming ill.u.s.trations and a text that is often clever and witty enough to suggest that authors of repute are sometimes tempted to lend their anonymous pens for this kind of work.

But even the tiniest little ”one-horse” railway distributes neat little ”folders,” showing conclusively that its tracks lead through the Elysian Fields and end at the Garden of Eden. A conspicuous feature in all hotel offices is a large rack containing packages of these gaily coloured folders, contributed by perhaps fifty different railways for the use of the hotel guests.

Owing to the unlimited time for which tickets are available, and to other causes, a race of dealers in railway tickets has sprung up, who rejoice in the euphonious name of ”scalpers,” and often do a roaring trade in selling tickets at less than regular fares. Thus, if the fare from A to B be $10 and the return fare $15, it is often possible to obtain the half of a return ticket from a scalper for about $8. Or a man setting out for a journey of 100 miles buys a through ticket to the terminus of the line, which may be 400 miles distant. On this through ticket he pays a proportionally lower rate for the distance he actually travels, and sells the balance of his ticket to a scalper. Or if a man wishes to go from A to B and finds that a special excursion ticket there and back is being sold at a single fare ($10), he may use the half of this ticket and sell the other half to a scalper in B. It is obvious that anything he can get for it will be a gain to him, while the scalper _could_ afford to give up to about $7 for it, though he probably will not give more than $4. The profession of scalper may, however, very probably prove an evanescent one, as vigorous efforts are being made to suppress him by legislative enactment.

Americans often claim that the ordinary railway-fare in the United States is less than in England, amounting only to 2 cents (1_d._) per mile. My experience, however, leads me to say that this a.s.sertion cannot be accepted without considerable deduction. It is true that in many States (including all the Eastern ones) there is a statutory fare of 2 cents per mile, but this (so far as I know) is not always granted for ordinary single or double tickets, but only on season, ”commutation,” or mileage tickets. The ”commutation” tickets are good for a certain number of trips. The mileage tickets are books of small coupons, each of which represents a mile; the conductor tears out as many coupons as the pa.s.senger has travelled miles. This mileage system is an extremely convenient one for (say) a family, as the books are good until exhausted, and the coupons are available on any train (with possibly one or two exceptions) on any part of the system of the company issuing the ticket. Which of our enlightened British companies is going to be the first to win the hearts of its patrons by the adoption of this neat and easy device? Out West and down South the fares for ordinary tickets purchased at the station are often much higher than 2 cents a mile; on one short and very inferior line I traversed the rate was 7 cents (3-1/2_d._) per mile. I find that Mr.

W.M. Acworth calculates the average fare in the United States as 1-1/4_d._ per mile as against 1-1/6_d._ in Great Britain. Professor Hadley, an American authority, gives the rates as 2.35 cents and 2 cents respectively.

British critics would, perhaps, be more lenient in their animadversions on American railways, if they would more persistently bear in mind the great difference in the conditions under which railways have been constructed in the Old and the New World. In England, for example, the railway came _after_ the thick settlement of a district, and has naturally had to pay dearly for its privileges, and to submit to stringent conditions in regard to construction and maintenance. In the United States, on the other hand, the railways were often the first _roads_ (hence rail_road_ is the American name for them) in a new district, the inhabitants of which were glad to get them on almost any terms. Hence the cheap and provisional nature of many of the lines, and the numerous deadly level crossings. The land grants and other privileges accorded to the railway companies may be fairly compared to the road tax which we willingly submit to in England as the just price of an invaluable boon. This reflection, however, need not be carried so far as to cover with a mantle of justice _all_ the railway concessions of America!

Two things in the American parlour-car system struck me as evils that were not only unnecessary, but easily avoidable. The first of these is that most illiberal regulation which compels the porter to let down the upper berth even when it is not occupied. The object of this is apparently to induce the occupant of the lower berth to hire the whole ”section” of two berths, so as to have more ventilation and more room for dressing and undressing. Presumably the parlour-car companies know their own business best; but it would seem to the average ”Britisher”

that such a petty spirit of annoyance would be likely to do more harm than good, even in a financial way. The custom would be more excusable if it were confined to those cases in which two people shared the lower berth. The custom is so unlike the usual spirit of the United States, where the practice is to charge a liberal round sum and then relieve you of all minor annoyances and exactions, that its persistence is somewhat of a mystery.

The continuance of the other evil I allude to is still less comprehensible. The United States is proverbially the paradise of what it is, perhaps, now behind the times to term the gentler s.e.x. The path of woman, old or new, in America is made smooth in all directions, and as a rule she has the best of the accommodation and the lion's share of the attention wherever she goes. But this is emphatically not the case on the parlour car. No attempt is made there to divide the s.e.xes or to respect the privacy of a lady. If there are twelve men and four women on the car, the latter are not grouped by themselves, but are scattered among the men, either in lower or upper berths, as the number of their tickets or the courtesy of the men dictates. The lavatory and dressing-room for men at one end of the car has two or more ”set bowls” (fixed in basins), and can be used by several dressers at once. The parallel accommodation for ladies barely holds one, and its door is provided with a lock, which enables a selfish bang-frizzler and rouge-layer to occupy it for an hour while a queue of her unhappy sisters remains outside. It is difficult to see why a small portion at one end of the car should not be reserved for ladies, and separated at night from the rest of the car by a curtain across the central aisle. Of course the pa.s.sage of the railway officials could not be hindered, but the masculine pa.s.sengers might very well be confined for the night to entrance and egress at their own end of the car. An improvement in the toilette accommodation for ladies also seems a not unreasonable demand.

Miss Catherine Bates, in her ”Year in the Great Republic,” narrates the case of a man who was nearly suffocated by the fact that a slight collision jarred the lid of the top berth in which he was sleeping and snapped it to! This story _may_ be true; but in the only top berths which I know the occupant _lies_ upon the lid, which, to close, would have to spring _upwards_ against his weight!

A third nuisance, or combination of benefit and nuisance, or benefit with a very strong dash of avoidable nuisance, is the train boy. This young gentleman, whose age varies from fifteen to fifty, though usually nearer the former than the latter, is one of the most conspicuous of the embryo forms of the great American speculator or merchant. He occupies with his stock in trade a corner in the baggage car or end carriage of the train, and makes periodical rounds throughout the cars, offering his wares for sale. These are of the most various description, ranging from the daily papers and current periodicals through detective stories and tales of the Wild West, to chewing-gum, pencils, candy, bananas, skull-caps, fans, tobacco, and cigars. His pleasing way is to perambulate the cars, leaving samples of his wares on all the seats and afterwards calling for orders. He does this with supreme indifference to the occupation of the pa.s.senger. Thus, you settle yourself comfortably for a nap, and are just succ.u.mbing to the drowsy G.o.d, when you feel yourself ”taken in the abdomen,” not (fortunately) by ”a chunk of old red sandstone,” but by the latest number of the _Ill.u.s.trated American_ or _Scribner's Monthly_. The rounds are so frequent that the door of the car never seems to cease banging or the cold draughts to cease blowing in on your bald head. Mr. Phil Robinson makes the very sensible suggestion that the train boy should have a little printed list of his wares which he could distribute throughout the train, whereupon the traveller could send for him when wanted. Another suggestion that I venture to present to this independent young trader is that he should provide himself with copies of the novels treating of the districts which the railway traverses. Thus, when I tried to procure from him ”Ramona” in California, or ”The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains”

in Tennessee, or ”The Hoosier Schoolmaster” in Ohio, or ”The Grandissimes” near New Orleans, the nearest he could come to my modest demand was ”The Kreutzer Sonata” or the last effort of Miss Laura Jean Libbey, a popular American novelist, who describes in glowing colours how two aristocratic Englishmen, fighting a duel near London somewhere in the seventies, were interrupted by the heroine, who drove between them in a hansom _and pair_ and received the shots in its panels! Out West, too, he could probably put more money in his pocket if he were disposed to put his pride there too. One pert youth in Arizona preferred to lose my order for cigars rather than bring the box to me for selection; he said ”he'd be darned if he'd sling boxes around for me; I could come and choose for myself.” However, when criticism has been exhausted it is an undeniable fact that the American Pullman cars are more comfortable and considerably cheaper than the so-called _compartiments de luxe_ of European railways.

It is, perhaps, worth noting that the comfort of the engine-driver, or engineer as he is called _lingua Americana_, is much better catered for in the United States than in England. His cab is protected both overhead and at the sides, while his bull's-eye window permits him to look ahead without receiving the wind, dust, and snow in his eyes. The curious English conservatism which, apparently, believes that a driver will do his work better because exposed to almost the full violence of the elements always excites a very natural surprise in the American visitor to our sh.o.r.es.

The speed of American trains is as a rule slower than that of English ones, though there are some brilliant exceptions to this rule. I never remember dawdling along in so slow and apparently purposeless a manner as in crossing the arid deserts of Arizona--unless, indeed, it was in travelling by the Manchester and Milford line in Wales. The train on the branch between Raymond (a starting-point for the Yosemite) and the main line went so cannily that the engine-driver (an excellent marksman) shot rabbits from the engine, while the fireman jumped down, picked them up, and clambered on again at the end of the train. The only time the train had to be stopped for him was when the engineer had a successful right and left, the victims of which expired at some distance from each other. It should be said that there was absolutely no reason to hurry on this trip, as we had ”las.h.i.+ns” of time to spare for our connection at the junction, and the pa.s.sengers were all much interested in the sport.

At the other end of the scale are the trains which run from New York to Philadelphia (90 miles) in two hours, the train of the Reading Railway that makes the run of 55 miles from Camden to Atlantic City in 52 minutes, and the Empire State Express which runs from New York to Buffalo (436-1/2 miles) at the rate of over 50 miles an hour, including stops. These, however, are exceptional, and the traveller may find that trains known as the ”Greased Lightning,” ”Cannon Ball,”

or ”G-Whizz” do not exceed (if they even attain) 40 miles an hour. The possibility of speed on an American railway is shown by the record run of 436-1/2 miles in 6-3/4 hours, made on the New York Central Railroad in 1895 (= 64.22 miles per hour, exclusive of stops), and by the run of 148.8 miles in 137 minutes, made on the same railway in 1897. The longest unbroken runs of regular trains are one of 146 miles on the Chicago Limited train on the Pennsylvania route, and one of 143 miles by the New York Central Railway running up the Hudson to Albany. As experts will at once recognise, these are feats which compare well with anything done on this side of the Atlantic.

In the matter of accidents the comparison with Great Britain is not so overwhelmingly unfavourable as is sometimes supposed. If, indeed, we accept the figures given by Mullhall in his ”Dictionary of Statistics,” we have to admit that the proportion of accidents is five times greater in the United States than in the United Kingdom.

The statistics collected by the Railroad Commissioners of Ma.s.sachusetts, however, reduce this ratio to five to four. The safety of railway travelling differs hugely in different parts of the country. Thus Mr. E.B. Dorsey shows (”English and American Railways Compared”) that the average number of miles a pa.s.senger can travel in Ma.s.sachusetts without being killed is 503,568,188, while in the United Kingdom the number is only 172,965,362, leaving a very comfortable margin of over 300,000,000 miles. On the whole, however, it cannot be denied that there are more accidents in American railway travelling than in European, and very many of them from easily preventable causes. The whole spirit of the American continent in such matters is more ”casual” than that of Europe; the American is more willing to ”chance it;” the patriarchal regime is replaced by the every-man-for-himself-and-devil-take-the-hindmost system. When I hired a horse to ride up a somewhat giddy path to the top of a mountain, I was supplied (without warning) with a young animal that had just arrived from the breeding farm and had never even seen a mountain. Many and curious, when I regained my hotel, were the enquiries as to how he had behaved himself; and it was no thanks to them that I could report that, though rather frisky on the road, he had sobered down in the most sagacious manner when we struck the narrow upward trail. In America the railway pa.s.senger has to look out for himself. There is no checking of tickets before starting to obviate the risk of being in the wrong train. There is no porter to carry the traveller's hand-baggage and see him comfortably ensconced in the right carriage. When the train does start, it glides away silently without any warning bell, and it is easy for an inadvertent traveller to be left behind. Even in large and important stations there is often no clear demarcation between the platforms and the permanent way. The whole floor of the station is on one level, and the rails are flush with the spot from which you climb into the car. Overhead bridges or subways are practically unknown; and the arriving pa.s.senger has often to cross several lines of rails before reaching sh.o.r.e. The level crossing is, perhaps, inevitable at the present stage of railroad development in the United States, but its annual butcher's bill is so huge that one cannot help feeling it might be better safeguarded. Richard Grant White tells how he said to the station-master at a small wayside station in England, _a propos_ of an overhead footbridge: ”Ah, I suppose you had an accident through someone crossing the line, and then erected that?” ”Oh, no,” was the reply, ”we don't wait for an accident.” Mr. White makes the comment, ”The trouble in America is that we _do_ wait for the accident.”

When I left England in September, 1888, we sailed down the Mersey on one of those absolutely perfect autumn days, the very memory of which is a continual joy. I remarked on the beauty of the weather to an American fellow-pa.s.senger. He replied, half in fun, ”Yes, this is good enough for England; but wait till you see our American weather!” As luck would have it, it was raining heavily when we steamed up New York harbour, and the fog was so dense that we could not see the statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, though we pa.s.sed close under it. The same American pa.s.senger had expatiated to me during the voyage on the merits of the American express service. ”You have no trouble with porters and cabs, as in the Old World; you simply point out your trunks to an express agent, give him your address, take his receipt, and you will probably find your trunks at the house when you arrive.”

We reached New York on a Sat.u.r.day; I confidently handed over my trunk to a representative of the Transfer Company about 9 A.M., hied to my friend's house in Brooklyn, and saw and heard nothing more of my trunk till Monday morning!

Such was the way in which two of my most cherished beliefs about America were dissipated almost before I set foot upon her free and sacred soil! It is, however, only fair to say that if I had a.s.sumed these experiences to be really characteristic, I should have made a grievous mistake. It is true that I afterwards experienced a good many stormy days in the United States, and found that the predominant weather in all parts of the country was, to judge from my apologetic hosts, the ”exceptional;” but none the less I revelled in the bright blue, clear, sunny days with which America is so abundantly blessed, and came to sympathise very deeply with the depression that sometimes overtakes the American exile during his sojourn on our fog-bound coasts. So, too, I found the express system on the whole what our friend Artemus Ward calls ”a sweet boon.” Certainly it is as a rule necessary, in starting from a private house, to have one's luggage ready an hour or so before one starts one's self, and this is hardly so convenient as a hansom with you inside and your portmanteau on top; and it is also true that there is sometimes (especially in New York) a certain delay in the delivery of one's belongings. In nine cases out of ten, however, it was a great relief to get rid of the trouble of taking your luggage to or from the station, and feel yourself free to meet it at your own time and will. It was not often that I was reduced to such straits as on one occasion in Brooklyn, when, at the last moment, I had to charter a green-grocer's van and drive down to the station in it, triumphantly seated on my portmanteau.

The check system on the railway itself deserves almost unmitigated praise, and only needs to be understood to be appreciated. On arrival at the station the traveller hands over his impedimenta to the baggage master, who fastens a small metal disk, bearing the destination and a number, to each package, and gives the owner a duplicate check. The railway company then becomes responsible for the luggage, and holds it until reclaimed by presentation of the duplicate check. This system avoids on the one hand the chance of loss and trouble in claiming characteristic of the British system, and on the other the waste of time and expense of the Continental system of printed paper tickets.

On arrival at his destination the traveller may hurry to his hotel without a moment's delay, after handing his check either to the hotel porter or to the so-called transfer agent, who usually pa.s.ses through the train as it reaches an important station, undertaking the delivery of trunks and giving receipts in exchange for checks.

Besides the city express or transfer companies, the chief duty of which is to convey luggage from the traveller's residence to the railway station or _vice versa_, there are also the large general express companies or carriers, which send articles all over the United States. One of the most characteristic of these is the Adams Express Company, the widely known name of which has originated a popular conundrum with the query, ”Why was Eve created?” This company began in 1840 with two men, a boy, and a wheelbarrow; now it employs 8,000 men and 2,000 wagons, and carries parcels over 25,000 miles of railway.

The Wells, Fargo & Company Express operates over 40,000 miles of railway.

Coaching in America is, as a rule, anything but a pleasure. It is true that the chance of being held up by ”road agents” is to-day practically non-existent, and that the spectacle of a crowd of yelling Apaches making a stage-coach the pin-cus.h.i.+on for their arrows is now to be seen nowhere but in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. But the roads! No European who has done much driving in the United States can doubt for one moment that the required Man of the Hour is General Wade.[31] Even in the State of New York I have been in a stage that was temporarily checked by a hole two feet deep in the centre of the road, and that had to be emptied _and held up_ while pa.s.sing another part of the same road. In Virginia I drove over a road, leading to one of the most frequented resorts of the State, which it is simple truth to state offered worse going than any ordinary ploughed field. The wheels were often almost entirely submerged in liquid mud, and it is still a mystery to me how the tackle held together. To be jolted off one's seat so violently as to strike the top of the carriage was not a unique experience. Nor was the spending of ten hours in making thirty miles with four horses. In the Yellowstone one of the coaches of our party settled down in the midst of a slough of despond on the highway, from which it was finally extricated _backwards_ by the combined efforts of twelve horses borrowed from the other coaches. Misery makes strange bedfellows, and the ingredients of a Christmas pudding are not more thoroughly shaken together or more inextricably mingled than stage-coach pa.s.sengers in America are apt to be. The difficulties of the roads have developed the skill, courage, and readiness of the stage-coach men to an extraordinary degree, and I have never seen bolder or more dexterous driving than when California Bill or Colorado Jack rushed his team of four young horses down the breakneck slopes of these terrible highways. After one particularly hair-raising descent the driver condescended to explain that he was afraid to come down more slowly, lest the hind wheels should skid on the smooth rocky outcrop in the road and swing the vehicle sideways into the abyss. In coming out of the Yosemite, owing to some disturbance of the ordinary traffic arrangements our coach met the incoming stage at a part of the road so narrow that it seemed absolutely impossible for the two to pa.s.s each other. On the one side was a yawning precipice, on the other the mountain rose steeply from the roadside. The off-wheels of the incoming coach were tilted up on the hillside as far as they could be without an upset. In vain; our hubs still locked. We were then allowed to dismount. Our coach was backed down for fifty yards or so. Small heaps of stones were piled opposite the hubs of the stationary coach.

Our driver whipped his horses to a gallop, ran his near-wheels over these stones so that their hubs were raised _above_ those of the near-wheels of the other coach, and successfully made the dare-devil pa.s.sage, in which he had not more than a couple of inches' margin to save him from precipitation into eternity. I hardly knew which to admire most--the ingenuity which thus made good in alt.i.tude what it lacked in lat.i.tude, or the phlegm with which the occupants of the other coach retained their seats throughout the entire episode.

The Englishman arriving in Boston, say in the middle of the lovely autumnal weather of November, will be surprised to find a host of workmen in the Common and Public Garden busily engaged in laying down miles of portable ”plank paths” or ”board walks,” elevated three or four inches above the level of the ground. A little later, when the snowy season has well set in, he will discover the usefulness of these apparently superfluous planks; and he will hardly be astonished to learn that the whole of the Northern States are covered in winter with a network of similar paths. These gangways are made in sections and numbered, so that when they are withdrawn from their summer seclusion they can be laid down with great precision and expedition. No statistician, so far as I know, has calculated the total length of the plank paths of an American winter; but I have not the least doubt that they would reach from the earth to the moon, if not to one of the planets.

The river and lake steamboats of the United States are on the average distinctly better than any I am acquainted with elsewhere. The much-vaunted splendours of such Scottish boats as the ”Iona” and ”Columba” sink into insignificance when compared with the wonderful vessels of the line plying from New York to Fall River. These steamers deserve the name of floating hotel or palace much more than even the finest ocean-liner, because to their sumptuous appointments they add the fact that they are, except under very occasional circ.u.mstances, _floating_ palaces and not _reeling_ or _tossing_ ones. The only hotel to which I can honestly compare the ”Campania” is the one at San Francisco in which I experienced my first earthquake. But even the veriest landsman of them all can enjoy the pa.s.sage of Long Island Sound in one of these stately and stable vessels, whether sitting indoors listening to the excellent band in one of the s.p.a.cious drawing-rooms in which there is absolutely no rude reminder of the sea, or on deck on a cool summer night watching the lights of New York gradually vanish in the black wake, or the moon riding triumphantly as queen of the heavenly host, and the innumerable twinkling beacons that safeguard our course. And when he retires to his cabin, pleasantly wearied by the glamour of the night and soothed by the supple stability of his floating home, he will find his bed and his bedroom twice as large as he enjoyed on the Atlantic, and may let the breeze enter, undeterred by fear of intruding wave or breach of regulation.